App Development Cost Breakdown – How much does it cost to make an app?

Since you’ve landed on this page, I guess you have made up your mind to build a mobile application. And for obvious reasons you are curious to know the total cost of app development.

Before the cost breakdown, it’s best to know the platform you want to opt for. Basically, it’s about the two giants – Google Play store and App Store.

Every day more than 1,000 apps are uploaded (rough estimation) with an increase of 15 percent downloads every year. So, we can say the competition level is getting higher each day.

The user-friendly mobile app has become mandatory for the brand awareness and the customer engagement.

You can’t actually make an exact judgement on the total cost as there are various factors that revolve around app development.

However, you can make an estimate of the cost with this useful guide.

Before diving into the topic, I’d like to provide you with some useful points for the mobile app development. Let’s go through them.

What is the purpose of a mobile app in your business?

It’s the basic point to consider. I hope, you have known the purpose of the mobile app for your business. If not, then have a look.

Establish Good Relation with Customer

The customer is the key factors to make your business successful. And in modern days, customer engagement in the mobile devices is inclining tremendously. It’d be wise to have your mobile app as customer spends most of the time on their devices rather than on the desktop. Also, your loyal customer could have a choice to make a direct contact through the app.

Create Your Brand

A well designed, user-friendly mobile app with customer’s preferred functionality will surely make a good impact on your business. With your app, you can show your features and services in just a few clicks. The more your app is downloaded, the more you’ll gain popularity. Then, your company will be recognised by the number of customers. This will cater to boost your business value and your company will have a unique brand.

Compete With Confidence

The mobile app is a medium to connect with the customer anywhere. If you succeed to engage your customer and gain customer trust, then you can compete with any sized business. To achieve the loyal customer, you need to offer rewards. You can track your customer behavior in the real-time to provide them with the useful updates and notification.

Increase Revenue

For the business owner, customer satisfaction is the primary goal. The mobile app will assist the satisfied customer to make their purchase more efficiently. Then your business value will expand quickly in the marketplace. This will eventually increase your business revenue.

What types of mobile application do you need?

Depending on the purpose of the application, we have defined two types of mobile app: Consumer mobile app and Enterprise mobile app.

Consumer mobile app (B2C) – Consumer mobile app is developed with the intention to help the user in their daily activity. This type of apps is mostly profit-oriented.

Enterprise mobile app (B2E) – Enterprise mobile app is developed by the individual company to simplify the business activity. The company’s employees are the expected users of this app. This type of apps is mostly service-oriented.

Different surveys on the internet show the cost of developing an enterprise mobile app ranges from $100,000 to $500,000.

Image source: Formotus

How much does it take to develop an app?

Developing an app consumes less time than developing a site. Typically, an app goes through 5 phases: planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. So, a time period of 2-3 months is sufficient to develop an app.

Image source: Accella

Which factors are essential to developing a successful app? How do they affect the app development cost?

We can find millions of apps on the online stores and all of them vary with the purpose of usability, style, design and functionality. Although they differ, we can see their similarity in the developmental factors. These factors impact directly on the cost of overall app development. Now, let’s discuss these factors in more detail.

Geography

You may wonder about how does geography affect the app development? But the reality is, it does. You’ll find developers everywhere on the earth. Depending on the expenditure rate of the country, their rate differs from others. Let’s crack the average hourly rate of the different countries.

Company of US & Canada: $40-$250 per hour.

Company of Australia: $50-$160 per hour.

Company of Western Europe: $35-$170 per hour.

Company of Eastern Europe: $20-$150 per hour

Company of India: $10-$80 per hour.

Developing Platform

Picking the suitable platform is a primary job of the company. First, you need to determine your targeted customer. Then you have to choose the suitable platform to develop your app whether it is Android or IOS or Windows. Generally, the development cost of IOS app is lower than that of Android app. Also, an Android app consumes 2-3 times longer time than IOS app. So, most of the company, develop their app in IOS. And if their app becomes successful, then they started to develop an Android app.

According to the data of upwork.com, IOS apps may cost $70-$420 (per hour) and Android apps may cost $90-$550 (per hour) depending on the types of app.

Image source: Upwork

App Functionality

Simple App

This type of app focused on providing a collective information to the audience. You will get the clear direction of the app if you can relate your app with the existing one.

Dynamic App

Dynamic App is the complex and advances application which needs wifi/data connection for its proper functioning. It provides real-time information, by accessing the database.

Database App

Database App allows the user access to search, edit, delete and sort the data. This type of app directly connects to the database to retrieve data and present it to the user.

Games

Games are the highly complex app which will provide 3D visualisation to the user. This type of app features audio/video processing, real-time synchronisation, an offline data cache and complex backend.

Technical Complexity

Third Party Integration

Developing a user-friendly app is the first and foremost goal of any developer. So, integrating third party services, API, libraries or framework adds extra functionality to the mobile app and fulfils the customer requirement. For example, if your e-commerce site needs to access online payment transaction, then your app must integrate a payment system like PayPal, Stripe, Brain-tree, etc. You can also add social media capabilities in your app by integrating Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social network APIs.

Back-end Development

Back-end contains the application logic of a business. Thus, you can use back-end APIs to enable the exchange of a data between the mobile app and database.

In-App Purchases

In-app purchasing support app owners to sell their virtual goods or services using virtual currency. In-app purchasing adds the complex functionality in the app.

Hardware Components

Nowadays, different smartphones are found in the market. They have different hardware components to add some extra and complex functionalities. Hardware components like Bluetooth, GPS, Sensors are inbuilt components in every device. Other hardware varies on the type of the application. Depending on the type of device, developers have to find the right components and test the app functionality. This will alter the overall cost of the app.

Design and Animation

Customised design is harder and complex to implement than a standard design. Also, it is time-consuming because it requires deep research. So, the cost of customised UI design would be higher. Designing a customised animation needs an expert which adds an extra cost in app development.

Development Team

After designing an app, its time to do some research on the development team. Developing a well-structured app with relevant functionality is not a joke. A company requires an expert team to develop a fine app for their business.

The basic team member includes good coding skill developer and a tester.

Developer

You can hire a freelancer for the app on the web or outsource your project. You can choose any of them depending on your requirement.

Freelancer

Hiring a freelance developer is the cheapest option of developing your app. Along with that, you should be ready to face all the risks.

Some freelancer may be unskilled, some may be slow or late to hand over your project. So, it’s more important to go through their online reviews and judge them for your app.

Outsourced

Outsourcing will be another good option for developing an app at the reasonable price. You will get what you pay for, so your payment will differ the design and functionality of your app. You can choose the company/agency for outsourcing by observing their portfolio on their site.

QA/Tester

After the completion of app development, you have to test your app. You may need to hire QA to find bugs (if any). He will assure the functionality of the app based on your business objective. Your hired QA will observe all the functionality of your app on different devices. And he informs every detail of an app which may be fruitful before launching your app.

Maintenance Expense

The overall cost of an app does not solely depend on designing and developing. It includes regularly updated app, customer supports and maintenance cost. You may also need to invest in app marketing and promotion to notify your targeted audience.

But the good thing about maintenance expense is this it is not included in the initial app development cost. It can be considered as the additional charges for maintaining your app in the future.

So, how much does it cost to develop an app?

The cost of developing an app differs as per requirement and the developer/agency you appointed. No one can guarantee the actual cost of developing an app for IOS or Android.

But, here we present different survey reports that show the average cost of developing an app.

Yes, it is. You can easily calculate the total cost of the app prior to the development by using an online app cost calculator.

But you will get only the rough calculation to estimate the overall cost of your app. Some online sites that provide cost estimation service are howmuchtomakeanapp, otreva, newsignature and estimatemyapp. To estimate the cost, you need to provide the development platforms and your desired app features.

Final Thought

Development of the mobile app for a business has become a necessity in the modern days. Still, you need to specify your personal preferences like business objective, targeted customers, budget limitation before creating an app. Because all of these things will have a direct impact on your app. After the complete development of your app, you need to focus on the rules of app submission and approval to place your app on the AppStore or on the Google PlayStore. Then it’s your job to optimise the app store for your app visibility.